AS PREDICTABLE AS OUR OWN TURKEY DINNER each Thanksgiving when I was growing up was the
story my father told about the year his family could buy only a few slices of baloney for the
holiday.

He recalled the pain of standing in the butcher's shop with barely enough money to pay for
lunch meat for his mother and four siblings, while those around him bought plump turkeys,
yams and cranberries. He described taking the meat home wrapped in butcher paper tied with a
string, which he later used in his shoes in place of the laces he couldn't afford.

The story, and dozens like it, always made me feel a bit guilty for never having suffered
the grinding poverty my father knew. Yet my own childhood in the 1950s was far from
privileged.

Until I was a teen-ager, we lived in tiny basement and attic apartments, sometimes sharing a
bathroom with several other families. Although we never went hungry, my father was often out
of work, especially during the winter months in Denver, when it was too cold to paint houses.
We got by, mostly because my mother worked in restaurants and department stores year-round.

Today, my children's experiences are as far-removed from those of my childhood as mine were
from my father's. Like many Americans, my family's history is one of seemingly endless upward
mobility, fueled by educational opportunity and an expanding economy. What is amazing is not
how unusual our story is, but how common. It is the typical American story: from rags to
riches -- or at least respectability -- in a single generation.

Unlike in virtually every place else in the world, it is possible to grow up poor in the
United States and achieve a secure and comfortable life, if not actual wealth. Americans swap
places on the economic ladder more than people of all other nations. A study by the Urban
Institute a number of years ago, for example, showed that nearly half of those persons whose
income was in the lowest 20 percent of all Americans' moved up to a higher quintile within 10
years, while a similar proportion of those in the highest income quintile actually moved
down.

But it is not just individual mobility that accounts for the experience of most Americans
that they are better off than their parents and grandparents were. In fact, as a nation we
are richer today than at any point in our history. We now take for granted as necessities
items that only a few years ago would have been beyond the reach of even the most wealthy.
Virtually all homes, including those of the poor, have telephones, color television sets,
microwaves and VCRs. As Robert Rector of the Heritage Foundation noted recently, nearly 40
percent of poor people own their own homes, 62 percent own a car, nearly half of all poor
households have air-conditioning, nearly a third own microwave ovens.

Compare this with what average Americans owned just a generation or two ago. More poor
people today own televisions and refrigerators than middle-income Americans did in 1950. In
1930, fewer than half of all households had any form or refrigeration; less than 1 percent of
Americans lack refrigerators now.

In a different way, this is what my father was trying to tell me with his story. The point
was not to make me feel sorry for him but to make me grateful that life was so much better
for me. Generations of Americans have worked hard so that their children could have better
lives than they did, and they have largely succeeded.

Along with remembering the poor during the holiday season, perhaps we should also be
thankful that there fewer poor people now than in the past -- and that the poor are not as
poor as they used to
be.

11/17/98: To Ken S. --- if you'll only listen11/10/98: What did you expect?11/04/98: Shame on those who don't vote!10/27/98: It's spreading!10/20/98: It ain't over yet10/15/98: Mourning motherhood9/23/98: Sosa and the race card9/23/98: Believable and truthful are two different things9/16/98: Time for a new Amendment!9/08/98: When silence is truly golden8/25/98: Bears and blunders8/25/98: Only consistency about Prez's anti-terrorism policy: its inconsistency8/18/98: Is our 'broken-compass' beyond fixing?8/11/98: Reno's risk8/04/98: When Truth is of the highest odor7/28/98: No way to protect ourselvesagainst a nut's wrath7/22/98: These 'choice' advocates are being demonzied ... by the Left.7/15/98: Will 'neonaticide' become the new buzzword?7/07/98: Urge to mega-merge, stopped in time6/30/98: Why take responsibility ifsomebody else will pay?6/23/98: Blinded by the red, or is it the green? 6/17/98: Flotsam in the wake of romance6/10/98: We have a ways to go in the bilingual war 6/3/98: Tyson's triumph over tragedy 5/28/98: Why Univision's Perenchio is out to hurt his fellow Hispanics 5/20/98: Sometimes Buba actually tells the truth ... as he sees it 5/12/98: Chill-out on the chihuahua and ... Seinfeld5/8/98: The revolution is just about over
4/28/98: Let's face it: both parties are full of hypocrites4/21/98: Legislating equality 4/14/98: One down, many to go4/7/98: Mexican mayhem?3/31/98: Of death and details3/25/98: Americans are unaware of NATO expansion3/18/98: Intellectual-ghettoes in the name of diversity3/11/98: Be careful what you wish for ...3/4/98: The Press' Learning-disability2/25/98: 50 States Are Enough!2/18/98: Casey at the Mat2/11/98: The legal profession's Final Solution2/4/98: Faith and the movies1/28/98: Clinton, Lewinsky, and Politics Vs. Principle1/21/98: Movement on the Abortion Front1/14/98: Clones, Courts, and Contradictions1/7/98: Child custody or child endangerment?12/31/97: Jerry Seinfeld, All-American12/24/97: Affirmative alternatives: New initiatives for equal opportunity are out there
12/17/97: Opening a window of opportunity (a way out of bilingual education for California's Hispanic kids)